Tormented
by ashford2ashford
Summary: Ashford2ashford is back with a more depressing and confusing note. This story is designed to be what you make of it, so I hope you do enjoy it despite that...


Tormented By Ashford2ashford

First Draft  
Beta: Shady777

Pairing(s): Alfred and Adrian (an original character)

Notes: Before you comment on the confusion and randomness, then I will have to say that it was intended to be there. This is not a story with a plot, nor is it meant to make any sense. It is simply there for you to make your own judgement on things, whether it be the lyrics of the song or the nightmarish reliving of the Rockfort attack…remember…this is for the confusion in all of us haunted by a death, a harsh memory, or a lost love…this is for all of us.  
But most of all, this is for JustinValentine and Shady777…because I love them both…I just never told them that…

Rating: PG-13

It was raining again…

It was always raining…

It was always raining on Rockfort…

It was always raining over the Ashford Mansion on Rockfort…

Letters gripped in one hand, letters of pain, of love, of death…  
Teeth clenched so that they may bite away lips or tongue or any shred of skin or flesh around the mouth, his hands curled up into fists so that the paper was falling into steady strips from his trembling fingertips, and his eyes were wide…wider than they had ever been, like two saucers filled with water, wide and blue and watering.

His reserve…his sanity…everything he fought for was falling away from him, falling away like the crumbling rocks of his precious island, falling fast like the soldiers fighting for their lives…nay…for his life…  
With the destruction and then madness around him, only one thing came to mind…why wasn't he out there dying with his island? Why was he stood at the window of his castle on the hill, his mansion, watching the carnage and the impending doom being brought upon his precious island…all his life gone in one flash, one bomb, one explosion…

Maybe it was meant to be, how would he know? He was not a scholar. Nor was he a philosopher or a believer in the powers that be…but he was a coward…if he was one thing…that was it…  
A coward who expected men to walk to their deaths for him, whilst he watched from a safe distance and celebrated his long life with himself and a glass of wine. A coward who had sensed danger moments before it had happened and had fled to safety, letting the "unwashed" die.

It was a harsh reality…but he had no choice but to accept it. No choice at all in the matter.

He whimpered, not in a usual manner, but in one that suggested the wildness of his untameable heart, of his free born spirit, of the beast that lay underneath human bone and human skin, when it's reality was that of full demon hatred.

This was it…it was happening again and then he saw the nuke that was not there before…and he panicked. The brightness of the light, the flash, the instant everything vanished, and then there was the sensation of flying…and he felt like this was meant to be…

The mansion gone in a flash…the island decimated and then…

Silence…

He should have known silence wouldn't last that long…especially as his reserve lay in the bed sheets and his terror was gazing at a piece of material above his head.

A dream…

A dream of the way things should have been on that day. The day Rockfort Island fell…the day Claire Redfield lived another day…and the day Alexia Ashford died…

"Why?" He questioned the still air.

"Why what?" Someone was lay next to him, someone warm and with a voice that ran like water down a soft slope, someone whose eyes were now locked with his – for he had turned his head to look in the direction of the voice.

"Why…why am I still alive? Why didn't I die? You know…back then?" His fears were gone and his reality was confirmed by speaking to the one with the soft voice, the one whose face and voice has been the only thing worth having in this world of sin.

Adrian…

The boy who he had met four years ago when he had been at his wits end in a sleazy downtown bar, with his only solace being that of a whisky bottle, and his only reality a harsh and unforgiving one. Adrian had been performing that night…Alfred had recalled looking up and seeing the smooth pale face smiling, singing, bringing rhythm and a calm that lay in his words.

"Love doesn't come in a day,  
Love lasts forever for us all,  
Even when you're lost,  
You can then be truly found,  
As long as you know you've fallen.

"How can we be lost,  
When we've not been found?  
How can we be found,  
Unless truly lost?

"Tell me baby…  
Lose me baby…  
Find me baby…

"Fallen angels have to have loved to gain their wings,  
Murderers must kill to satiate some form of lust,  
Satan must commit his crimes, for only one reason,  
For love is found in different ways in all of us.

"A love of an angel…  
A love of killing…  
A love of seeing sorrow…  
Even though you couldn't believe it.

"Lose yourself in me…  
Find yourself in my lips…  
Gain understanding by my voice…  
I'm all you need…"

Maybe Adrian had written that song for him? Who knows?  
He had seen the boy a numerous amount of times before that performance, and had even spoken to him once…

Adrian had an answer to the question asked.  
"Maybe someone up there doesn't want you to die, Alfred."

Alfred snorted, "Surely you've known me long enough to know I am not a strong believer of fate or Gods. I need to know why I didn't die. Why did my island, my sister, my father, and my soul die on that day, yet I still live to tell the tale? Why, Adrian? Why?"

"Because if you hadn't have lived, I would have never met you."

Alfred stopped. It was all Adrian ever needed to say…

Dear…sweet…Adrian…

For the first time in years…Alfred Ashford wept…


End file.
